Homer Simpson to promote Poland's nuclear plant drive

international | environment | opinion/analysis Saturday December 19, 2009 10:16 by Damien Moran

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Would you want Homer as a safety inspector at a nuclear plant?

As the Polish government energy marketeers sit around and forge out a plan on how to best make use of a proposed 10 million zloty (€2.4 mn) annually on promoting nuclear power, I thought it fitting to explore the subject. News has it that they are pondering over whether a Homer Simpson like figure could be concocted for TV to persuade the public of how nuclear can be a clean and efficient form of energy to heat households, run electrical utilities, power workplaces, etc.

So it seems fitting that I too would promote this ingenious vision of the Polish government, ever-known for their brain-numbingly creative ways of wasting taxpayers money.

While in Copenhagen powerful capitalists mainly argue over how to ensure capitalist production and consumption can be capped (but really just continued and accelerated) and traded without really affecting the status quo in the west (what's a few thousand lives in India, afterall, compared to the national self-interest) - arguments for nuclear energy are fundamentally flawed in their inability to answer for the environmental damage caused by uranium mining, nuclear waste (lets just outsource this to the global south like we do plastic waste!) and the exorbitant costs of securing nuclear plants.

The people who we have put in power (well I didn't and will not vote for such cronies, but I do pay taxes so I'm part of the problem) ain't talking about how to make renewable energies like wind, solar more cost-effective. Profit comes first, and the only hope at this stage, it may be argued and has been already on this site, is that the climate change sceptics are right and we are just going through a rough but quite natural climatic cycle. Fat chance though!

Note:
In January 2009 the State energy company Polska Grupa Energetyczna SA (PGE) declared its intention to build 2 nuclear plants. In August the government announced their draft proposals of how to ensure Poland will be legally able to go nuclear by 2011. They hope to have legislation ready by the end of 2010 and decide on locations by 2014 with the first plant to be constructed by 2020. The first intended nuclear power plant near the northern town of Żarnowiec was cancelled due to public protests and the changing econmic and political climate.

More info. can be found at
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NN_Nuclear_power_shap....html

If you want more info, photos about the background to the Zarnowiec plant that was never realised please look at the Wikipedia link.

To keep up to date with Polish activist news keep an eye on http://www.cia.bzzz.net (Good English section) and http://www.poland.indymedia.org (some English news)

Homer dealing wih nuclear waste - "hmmm, shall we dump it in the Baltic Sea or West Africa?"

Those who argue for nuclear power and have the technical know-how to make it work are a little small-brained in areas of environmental concern.

So if the Polish government wish to use Homer as a model to convince the 'dumb public'of how green a solution nuclear really is, then I say bring it on. Money well spent, once it has the opposite effect!